[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S135-S136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LANDMINES
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, according to Landmine Monitor, which is the
world's best source of data on the production, use, export,
stockpiling, and clearance of landmines, cluster munitions, and other
unexploded ordnance, 2016 was a terrible year for casualties caused by
mines and other UXO.
In 2016, the Monitor recorded 8,605 casualties, of which at least
2,089 people were fatalities. That is the highest number since 1999,
and it includes the most casualties of children ever recorded.
Civilians represented 78 percent of recorded casualties in 2016. There
are still 61 countries that are known to be contaminated with
landmines.
On the positive side, approximately 232,000 landmines were destroyed
in 2016, and 66 square miles of land were cleared of mines and other
UXO. International donors and UXO affected countries increased support
in 2016 for UXO clearance programs by $40 million above the previous
year to $564.5 million. The United States was, like previous years, by
far the largest donor.
It is also encouraging that, since March 1, 1999, when the
international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines came into force,
163 countries have joined. That is an extraordinary achievement for a
treaty that owes its existence to the vision and perseverance of
hundreds of advocacy, human rights, arms control, humanitarian
organizations, and journalists, around the world, and the leadership of
former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy; yet despite this
progress and substantial declining in the past few years, the number of
innocent people maimed and killed by mines has steadily increased.
There are several explanations for this. Rebel groups like ISIS
routinely use landmines and other improvised explosive devices. The
wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen have been largely
responsible. It may never be possible to completely eradicate the use
of landmines by rebel groups, for the weapon is so cheap to manufacture
while causing such harm.
But the major powers that have not joined the treaty--the United
States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India--also share the blame.
Antipersonnel landmines, which are designed to be triggered
indiscriminately by the victim, whether an unsuspecting farmer or an
enemy or friendly combatant, have no place in the arsenals of modern
militaries. It is hypocrisy to claim on the one hand, as our military
does, that it uses every precaution to avoid harming civilians and
prides itself on its precision weapons, and on the other hand to insist
on the right to use a weapon that is the antithesis of precise and
overwhelmingly harms civilians.
I have spoken more times than I can count about the scourge of
antipersonnel landmines and the need for the United States to join the
Mine Ban Treaty so we are no longer an excuse for other countries not
to join. Our military has not used landmines for more than two decades.
In fact, U.S. policy now strictly limits the use of antipersonnel mines
to the Korean Peninsula, but we do not need them. What we need is the
best protection for our troops to maneuver safely through minefields.
We should have banned these indiscriminate weapons a long time ago, and
we would have if landmines were blowing off the arms and legs of
children in this Nation the way they are in others, but we have learned
that the Pentagon is not in the habit of giving up weapons, even if
they are weapons that deserve to be relegated to the dustbin of
history. That decision will only be made by a President who is willing
to do what is morally right.
Landmines have been aptly described as weapons of mass destruction in
slow
[[Page S136]]
motion. President Trump reacted with anger and disgust, as he should
have, when Syria's President Assad used chlorine gas against his own
people. He should react the same way toward antipersonnel landmines and
set an example for the rest of the world.
I ask unanimous consent that a January 6, 2018, New York Times
editorial on this subject be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Jan. 6, 2018]
Why Do Land Mines Still Kill So Many?
(By the Editorial Board)
The world is rolling backward, and at a disturbingly faster
pace, in the struggle to limit carnage from land mines and
other booby-trap explosives. The most recent numbers,
covering 2016, are appalling.
Known casualties that year came to 8,605, including 2,089
deaths, according to a new report by Landmine Monitor, a
research arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
The toll was nearly 25 percent higher than the 6,967 maimed
and dead counted a year earlier, and more than double the
3,993 in 2014. And these numbers are almost assuredly an
undercount. ``In some states and areas, numerous casualties
go unrecorded,'' Landmine Monitor said.
Much of the 2016 mayhem stemmed from conflicts in
Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen, but people in 56
countries and other areas were killed or wounded by
improvised explosive devices and other ordnance placed by
governments or, more commonly, by insurgent groups. The sheer
indecency of it is self-evident. Nearly 80 percent of the
victims were civilians; children accounted for 42 percent of
civilian casualties in situations where the ages were known.
One subset of the menace, cluster munitions, is singularly
vicious. A single cluster bomb can contain dozens, even
hundreds, of baseball-size bomblets that spray in all
directions, ripping apart anything in their path. All too
often, they fail to detonate right away and thus become time
bombs that imperil unwary civilians who pick them up,
including curious children. Cluster munitions alone caused
971 known casualties in 2016, more than twice the toll of the
previous year, according to Cluster Munition Monitor. Most
victims were Syrians, nearly all of them civilians, but Saudi
Arabia has also used American-supplied cluster bombs in
Yemen.
Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that for well over
a decade the world seemed to have gotten a grip on what are
referred to generically as the ``explosive remnants of war.''
Thanks to an international treaty that came into force in
1999--now signed by 163 countries and banning the production,
stockpiling and transfer of land mines--casualties declined
steadily worldwide. They reached a low of 3,450 in 2013,
compared with 9,228 in 1999. (A companion treaty outlawing
cluster munitions, joined by 119 countries, went into effect
in 2010.) As the death and injury toll for 2016 shows, nearly
all that hard-won progress has been erased by the brutal
conflicts of recent vintage.
The picture is not irredeemably bleak. The Landmine Monitor
said that 32 donors, led by the United States, contributed
nearly $480 million in 2016 for mine clearance and victim
aid. That was an increase of 22 percent from the year before.
More than 232,000 antipersonnel mines were reportedly
destroyed in 2016, and about 66 square miles--an area nearly
the size of Brooklyn--were cleared of explosive hazards.
The grim reality, though, is that the land mine and cluster
munitions treaties are undercut by the refusal of some of
modern warfare's most powerful players to sign them. Among
those countries are China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia
and Saudi Arabia. And the United States. The Pentagon has
long insisted that eliminating cluster bombs could put
soldiers at risk. As for land mines, they are deemed by
Washington to be a useful tool in the demilitarized zone
separating North and South Korea--a first-line defense for
the South against a possible invasion. But given the North's
nuclear buildup, a mined DMZ seems to be a Cold War vestige
of diminished value.
Washington is not immune to international suasion. Land
mines are so stigmatized that American forces have barely
used them since the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The United States
stockpile, estimated at three million mines, is significantly
reduced from pre-treaty years; it's puny compared with the 26
million mines that Russia has on hand, according to the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Similarly, American
reliance on cluster munitions, which peaked in the early
stages of the 2003 Iraq war, has all but disappeared.
In 2014 the Obama administration even signaled it might be
willing to join the anti-mine treaty. Regrettably, that step
never came. It might have been a moral statement encouraging
others to follow suit. Now, with President Trump openly
disdainful of international agreements, the likelihood of
Washington's signing the treaty would seem to be about zero.
The Pentagon, under his ultimate control, recently authorized
the military to restock older cluster munitions, whose
immediate failure rate can be high, leaving bomblets that can
explode and kill civilians even years later.
For countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen,
the risks may endure long after the guns go silent. Vietnam
provides an example. Since the war there ended in 1975, at
least 40,000 Vietnamese are believed to have been killed and
another 60,000 wounded by American land mines, artillery
shells, cluster bombs and other ordnance that failed to
detonate back then. They later exploded when handled by
scrap-metal scavengers and unsuspecting children.
The lesson is stark for today's war-torn countries. They
could reap the same whirlwind in coming decades.
(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered
to be printed in the Record.)
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